Jon Snow (blackestsnow) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-05-04 22:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, jon snow |
RP: Night
Who: Jon Snow
When: 5 May 2013; small hours
Where: His trailer; Red Gum Studios, Anaheim, CA
Rating: Low; language and blood.
Status: Complete
Beside the firelight, the night was coldest.
Summer had stretched a decade, long and plentiful. Fertile lands were celebrated each harvest, septons giving thanks to the gods old and new. People grew fat and greedy, breeding fatter and greedier summer children than generations prior. Many forgot the words. Many were never taught.
“Winter is coming.”
Even seemingly endless summers had to die. Harvests came quicker, less bountiful. Winds changed, the sun began to rise later and sleep earlier.
Here, wherever here was, Jon understood autumn had just begun. Leaves turned yellow then gold, a final crisp dirty brown or blazing red before ghosting away, abandoning the branches they’d clung to for years as nature shed her summer coat and prepared for an ageless winter.
White ravens flew, a solemn and deafening surrender.
Already, snow blanketed the ground at Jon’s feet. Always. This far north green was not a familiar colour, shoots of spring tricked out of the ground on hot summer afternoons only to be suffocated by freezing night airs. Pitch black evenings of blatant gloom, a cold so terrible its significance could not be fathomed. The brain simply stopped at understanding the necessity for hotter fires, more wineskins, nålebinded mittens and thicker socks.
The weather would grow much, much worse in the coming months.
Inching ever closer to the brazier, Jon tried to find a bit of relief as the sun sank beneath the beyond. More mountains and snow and trees. A vast nothingness worse than the dark cinching in around him, invading his personal space without invitation. There was no comfort to be found here atop an ice wall 700 feet tall and 300 miles long. A solid block constantly melting and freezing, minute shifts over a melina in which nothing had truly changed except summers into winters and the nameless, gormless faces trudging its ramparts. Tens of thousands, dozens of thousands, a thousand. Only 300 men now guarding the night. Time and faith having chipped away at their brittle mortality.
Jon threw another log on the fire knowing it was a futile attempt at best. While his face defrosted, his backside froze. So much like this fucking wall I sense it laughing at me.
Flipping himself constantly like eggy fried bread did not a smidge of good either. Trying to keep bits from burning whether by fire or ice, every turn complete torture. Wait too long and the skin facing flames began to blister and dry crack. Turn away and the sudden loss of warmth was like being punched in the gut. Men had thrown themselves from the Wall for less maddening reasons.
Somehow, Jon had learned not to give into mindless fidgeting. It was a waste of his energy, the only real commodity he possessed worth more than the gloves keeping his fingers from rotting off. He needed energy to keep his eyes open through the long night so he could gaze out into the dark. Searching. Always watching and waiting for something that only ever suggested it might be cresting the horizon.
To date, nothing had happened.
Jon didn’t try to keep warm because no matter how many furs he donned or the number of prayers he whispered over the flames or how many short jaunts he took to stretch cramping legs the cold still seeped through his cloak. Past leather gambeson, breaching wool and linen tunics invading the very air between smallclothes and groin. The cold was everywhere. As much a part of Jon as the white blanket beyond was his surname.
He belonged there. Alone in the night. Uncomfortably throwing another log on the fire knowing ice would still seep through his bones and into his marrow. His pumping heart pushing it through constricted veins and leaving him hollow and motionless. Abandoned atop an impenetrable slab of glacier defenseless in the night.
Too close to the blaze, too close to comfort and Jon became scorched. His clothes caught fire, smoke filled his throat, and he no longer breathed.